Now for an article about one of the most magical things God gave humans for maintaining healthy relationships.  This is a powerful secret weapon and those of us that understand it have a much easier life.

Let me show how magical – with a true story about myself before I understood this magic.

Imagine having the magical power of stopping a three-hour-long conflict before it can begin!  I’ll bet you would pay some real cash for that magic.

Well, I am sharing it for free anyway.  Welcome to the relationship elite…

Many years ago, nearer the beginning of our marriage, we had dinner with a group of friends.  Apparently, during dinner, I had essentially turned my back to her while talking to the rest of the table – apparently for the majority of the dinner!

For those who know me, you are probably pretty shocked that I turned a simple dinner into an attention seeking – I mean teaching – opportunity.

As we left the dinner, my wife mentioned this to me and expressed how she felt unimportant to me as a result.  She felt I had been insensitive.  She felt like I had made the event about me at the expense of her.   In addition to that, she told me that I had a regular habit of putting other people ahead of her!

I was really offended!  I didn’t see that I had really done that.  I felt like she was judging me and doing so unfairly.  I thought she was being overly sensitive.  I went on the defense.

I do a lot of things so well as a husband.  With all the positives, rather than be grateful and appreciative about so many big things, she was being overly sensitive to a tiny misunderstanding on her part!  What did she know about my motives?  Did she really think I was the kind of man who would do that kind of thing to his wife – publicly!?  Intentionally?!

Well, I am guessing you can imagine that after I expressed these thoughts, the conflict was on!  The evening was ruined (because she had chosen that time to bring up something to ruin the evening, right?) and it had been such a good date – or so I had thought until I found out the whole thing was a complete failure…

And on and on.

We now know that we both handled it poorly – especially me.

Bummer.

Then I learned this magic power.  After learning the power, the exact same thing happened again.  The exact same thing.  I’m not kidding.  I think it may have even been at the same restaurant.

It was over a year later and we were driving away from having had dinner with friends.

I don’t think she did anything differently this time.  Again, her hurt was communicated and again, I interpreted it as criticism (now I know that she probably meant it as consultation).

However, rather than defending by expressing my offense at her lack of appreciation or her demands that I change to adapt to her hypersensitivity, I (wait for it)…

Apologized.  Read Part II and watch the magic at work to see what exactly I mean.